Wonder what would happen if you showed this empty-headed, funded-by-Portuguese-taxpayers, “green” media campaign promoting the use of cork over other wine stopper materials to somebody like Mayor Gavin Newsom, who’s, let’s say, sort of on the facile side. Well, I’d bet he’d be all yeah, but - he’d get all nuanced with a quickness, talking about the pros and cons of how best to keep the vino inside the bottle-o and how this thang isn’t such a simple black-and-white (or green-or-not) issue.

Of course it’s not a simple issue. Maybe it’s a small issue, but it’s not simple.

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 15, 2010 — Her career looked so promising until she committed the ultimate yuletide faux pas: showing up at the annual company holiday party with a bottle of wine – dare we say it?! — sealed with an artificial stopper.

Such is the sobering message from a video released recently at Party Faux Pas that depicts the sad tale of an office worker who fails to realize that artificial wine closures can undermine the environment. Not to mention the fact that metal and plastic wine closures are about as festive as moldy mistletoe.

The clip, narrated by not-so-internationally renowned wine sommelier Garth Lockwood, is one in a series of videos produced by 100% Cork, the nationwide campaign to educate wine drinkers about the environmental, social and technical benefits of choosing natural cork closures over artificial stoppers.

Additional videos, including those without tongues placed in cheek, can be found at www.100percentcork.org. The site also allows viewers to sign a pledge that will be sent to major wineries and wine retailers urging them to increase their reliance on wine finished with natural cork.

Reasons to Love and Choose Natural Cork

On a serious note, cork allows wine to properly age in a healthy and controlled environment and has proven to be the ideal closure for more than 400 years.

From an environmental perspective, metal screw caps and plastic stoppers produce 10-24 times more greenhouse gases and consume as much as five times more non-renewable energy than real cork over their life-cycles, according to a peer-reviewed study by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Cork is harvested from the bark of cork oak trees grown in the Mediterranean Basin. Contrary to popular belief, cork oaks are not cut down or harmed during the harvest, which provides among the world’s highest-paid agricultural jobs.

Cork oaks can live for hundreds of years, and there is no shortage of corks or cork oak trees. Demand for cork provides an incentive to plant and maintain the Mediterranean’s vast oak forests, which every year offset the carbon produced by 2.5 million cars.

The World Wildlife Federation has called the use of plastic and metal wine closures a “major threat” to Mediterranean cork oak forests because their use undermines demand for cork.

About 100% Cork
100% Cork is a campaign to educate U.S. wine consumers about the benefits of choosing wine with real cork stoppers because of cork’s environmental, technical and societal advantages. The campaign seeks to recruit and organize wine consumers to request that winemakers and retailers choose natural cork over artificial stoppers. The campaign is funded by the Portuguese Cork Association and the Cork Quality Council.

What makes San Francisco’s monthly Critical Mass an illegal bicycle parade is the fact that nobody gets permits. ‘Cause getting a permit is hard – it would entail doing stuff that costs a lot of money and it would make you a magnet for lawsuits, so who needs that, right?

I’ll tell you, the biggest shock that drivers have when they get stuck at an intersection is that they get no sympathy from the cops.Drivers without criminal records tend to stay by their cars and watch the parade of bikes.

OTOH, drivers with criminal records, well, Critical Mass is a test of their ability to maintain. Some fail.

Do I think San Francisco has the will to kill Critical Mass? No. But do I think Police Chief George Gascon is planning on shaking things up, in the coming months, you know, when rain no longer threatens* and the number of cyclists is bigger? Yes.

San Francisco’s monthly semi-unauthorized bicycle parade was well-attended and exceptionally uglylast night. Did your bike suffer any property damage (“let’s fucking beat up his car!”)? For whatever reason, Halloween Critical Mass 2009 had lots of gaps so that led to confrontations at every intersection – confused car drivers were tempted to just push through to end their lengthy waits. And the SFPD seemed less pro-bike than I’m used to seeing. Oh well.

And then an error – the main body of riders hung a right and headed up Van Ness. That’s not the way to cork MUNI, which got back to normal on Market Street round about 7:30 PM. Oh well. Van Ness from Hayes looking north up to California – the whole thing was entirely filled with bikes: